Road Rage

I drive angry. I guess you could say I’m even an angry driver. An irritated driver. I am easily annoyed by what I perceive to be the shortcomings of almost every other driver that shares the road with me. I have a tendency to think that I am the only driver on the road worthy of a license. I shake my head a lot. Especially at cars that sit at red lights with their right blinker on with no traffic moving in any direction. I may sit behind a car like that and simmer, gesture toward the light and mouth “right on red” or something like that. I think of how those seconds wasted there have now altered my life. Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. Who knows?

So I have some trouble driving most days. I’m trying to get better at this. I’m starting to train myself to laugh when things annoy me. I am starting to give thumbs up to drivers instead of middle fingers. I shake my head now in an “Awwww man” way rather than the “humanity confounds me and I might curl up into a ball of mindless tv later to stop the shakes” sort of way.

But this is Providence driving mostly. Just bringing my son to school or driving to work. This isn’t crazy town driving. This is just your run of the mill stressed out soccer moms on their phones in a hurry to get their Dunkin Donuts traffic. This isn’t that crazy.

I know crazy. I’ve been to Rome. I’ve driven in L.A. New York isn’t that bad once you get used to it. But I have friends that have been to India and from what they describe and the pictures and videos I’ve seen of India.

And all I can say is

fuck

that

shit.

If I were a driver in India I would just turn off my car in traffic, hand my keys to the nearest village boy, walk into the wilderness and renounce society. I would use my driver’s license as a crude digging tool and fashion it into a spoon/knife for when I hunt and kill animals in my yurt that I fashioned from animal pelts and the dead limbs of trees. So I guess what I’m saying is, take a deep breath the next time you’re in traffic and repeat this mantra “This isn’t India. This isn’t India. This isn’t India.”